The University of Central Arkansas in Conway gets $300,000 from Southwestern Energy Company to support undergraduate and graduate student research through a new endowed fund that bears the utility’s name.

Instead of soaring under new ownership, M&M Environmental Group, which provided environmental services to the oil and gas industries, went into a tailspin. So did the relationship between McFadin and the Omega Group; eventually the two sides deadlocked on whether to file for bankruptcy protection late last year.

SWN Production (Arkansas) LLC has agreed to pay the federal government $950,000 to resolve claims that the company tapped unleased federally owned minerals in Conway and Van Buren counties over a three-year period.

The Lower Smackover Brown Dense formation has, so far, been a disappointment for exploration companies, mineral rights owners and state regulators hoping for a 21st century oil boom in south Arkansas and north Louisiana.

In the past decade, the players in the Fayetteville Shale have shuffled and consolidated, drilling has peaked and retreated, employment has expanded and contracted, technology has advanced, environmental and infrastructure concerns have reared their heads and government has responded.

The Environmental Integrity Project says some oil and gas companies have continued the illegal injection of diesel fuel during hydraulic fracturing, including Southwestern Energy and ExxonMobil subsidiaries in the Fayetteville Shale.

Southwestern Energy of Houston says its natural gas wells in central Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale Play and the Northeast United States’ Marcellus Shale have continued to outpace expectations in the second quarter.

Early in February, the city of Little Rock is scheduled to open the seventh compressed natural gas station in Arkansas that is available for public use. Arkansas has had public CNG stations for just a few years — a station owned by Arkansas Oklahoma Gas Corp. was opened in 2011.